e earnestly hide our real
selves from all save the single soul we love.

To assume intimate knowledge of the hundred considerations which make up
a single situation, the various complexities of temperament and
disposition which the personal equation continually produces in human
affairs, of the imperceptible fibres of the web which lies between two
souls, preventing always the fullest understanding, unless Love, the
magician, gives new sight--amounts to the proclamation of practical
Omnipotence.

[Sidenote: "I Told You So"]

There is no position in life which is secure. No complication ever comes
to our friends, which our advice, acted upon, would not immediately
solve. If our most minute directions are not thankfully received and put
into effect, there is always the comforting indication of
superiority--"I told you so."

And when the jaded soul revolts in supreme defiance, declaring its right
to its own life, its own duties, its own friendships, and its own loves,
there is much expressed disgust, much misfortune predicted, and, saddest
of all, much wounded vanity.

The dominant egotism forbids that anything shall be better than itself.
No success is comparable to one's own, no life so wisely ordered, and
there is nothing so sad as the fame attained by those who do not follow
our advice.

Adversity is commonly accepted as the test of friendship, but there is
another more certain still--success. Anyone may bestow pity. It is
fatally easy to offer to those less fortunate than ourselves; whose
capabilities have not proved adequate, as ours have; but it requires
fine gifts of generous feeling to be genuinely glad at another's good
fortune, in which we cannot by any possibility hope to share.

[Sidenote: Advice]

Advice is usually to be had for the asking. In the case of a corporation
attorney or a specialist, there is a high value placed upon it, but it
is to be freely had from those who love us, and, strangely enough, from
those who do not.

It is one of the blessings of love, that all the experience of another,
all the battles of the other soul, are laid open for our better
understanding of our own path. But there is a subtle distinction between
the counsel of love and that of vanity. The one is unselfishly glad of
our achievements, taking new delight in every step upward, while the
other passes over triumphs in silence and carps upon the misfortune
until it is not to be borne.

From the intimate union of tw